The recent sad death of Wolf Rudiger Hess, the loyal son of
Hitler's Deputy Rudolf Hess, reminds us that ideas do transcend mortality. When
his father took it upon himself to personally present a peace proposal to
Britain, he took with him a photograph of his then baby son whom he doted upon.

On his subsequently being sentenced to life imprisonment, in
solitary confinement without parole (for crimes against peace!) his judges
reduced themselves to a level of inhumanity that knows few equals.

Rudolf Hess in his misery refused to see his wife Ilse or his
son, preferring that they should not see him so humiliated. Eventually after
twenty-five years he relented and again met his son, by then a grown man with
architectural qualifications. Both father and son were severely punished for
illicitly embracing.

Eventually, the handsome young son's father perished in his
cell at the hands of a hired strangler whilst under the American regime; there
is little dispute about that.

Rudolf Hess never gave up fighting for his father's freedom,
his honour and indeed for justice. His fight was curtailed only by his own
illness. As National Socialists we believe in the after-life and the
reunification of ideals and loved ones. Undoubtedly father and son, now beyond
the reach of warped sadists, stroll once again through the meadows of Elysium.
In tribute we publish the gist of Rudolf Hess's Konigsberg speech to the front
line fighters of the Great War.

THE SPIRIT OF THE TRENCHES ENDURES

"Today our people have the good fortune to be led by soldiers
who have fought in the front line trenches and who have brought over into the
leadership of the state those virtues which they learned at the front. They are
carrying out the rebuilding of the Reich in the spirit of the trenches: because
it was the spirit of the trenches that created National Socialism.

While in the trenches they were everywhere confronted with
death; and in the face of this terror all feeling of class distinction or
differences of calling broke down. In the common sorrows and joys that they
shared while in the trenches there developed a spirit of comradeship between
fellow countrymen such as had never been known before. In the trenches the
common destiny stood out before all eyes in gigantic form above the destiny of
the individual.

And yet another thing arose in those trenches, despite all
the bitterness and ruthlessness of the struggle. This was a certain feeling that
between the men in the front lines on the opposite frontiers of no-man's-land
there was a certain bond of union which arose from the fact that on both sides
they had to endure the same suffering, to stand in the same mud and face the
same death.

And this feeling of a common bond has remained up to this
present day. Is it not so? When soldiers of the front line trenches who fought
on the opposite sides now find themselves together they naturally speak of the
world war: but the hope that is constantly glittering through their conversation
is the hope of Peace. And therefore it is that the men who fought in the front
line trenches are now called upon to throw a bridge of understanding across the
gulf that separates nation from nation, if the politicians cannot find the means
of doing so.

FRONT LINE SOLDIERS ARE FREE OF RESPONSIBILTY

We who fought in the trenches are determined that an
incompetent diplomacy shall not be the cause of our stumbling into another
catastrophe. The front line soldiers' would have to bear the brunt of the
suffering once again.

The soldiers who fought in the trenches, no matter on which
side, feel free of all responsibility for the last war. We want to work together
to prevent a new catastrophe. We desire in common to build up in peace what in
common we destroyed in war.

It is high time that now at last a real understanding should
be reached among the nations. This must be an understanding based on mutual
respect for one another; because only such an understanding can endure. It must
be founded on the same kind of mutual respect as those who fought on opposite
sides in the front line trenches have always had for one another - for there
must be no doubt about this.

Most of the great powers have accumulated more war material
now than ever before.

But war material, which is in danger of deteriorating, is
perilous stuff in the midst of a world, which has been in a spirit of unrest
ever since the war, and among nations that have the highest mistrust of one
another today. An insignificant episode, like the unfortunate shot that was
fired in Sarejevo in 1914 - perhaps an explosion from the pistol of a fool -
might suffice, even against the best will of the nations concerned, to set
millions of people over against one another in armed conflict. Such an episode
might be sufficient to plough up whole sections of countryside through tens of
thousands of cannons of all calibre and ranges, to blow towns and villages into
the air in a sea of flames and to smother all life in clouds of poison gas.

"BE HONEST"

Those who took part in the world war had a presentation of
what a modern war would signify today with more fully perfected weapons. I
appeal to the front line comrades of the war, on all sides. Be honest. Of course
we once stood out there in the proud feeling that we were doughty men -
soldiers, warriors, liberated from the every day routine of our former
existence. We probably experienced a temporary pleasure in a kind of life that
was crude contrast to the languid existence which modern civilisation and hyper-civilisation
brings with it. We felt ourselves worthier men than those who were far from the
front and had nothing to do with the destiny that was being decided there. We
felt that we were defending the life of our nation and that we were the trustees
of its future.

But let us be honest. The smell of death was always in our
nostrils. We have seen death in more fearful and mangled shapes than any men
have before our time. We squatted and crouched in our dugouts, waiting to be
crushed to pieces. We listened with still breath as our trained ear heard the
hiss of the shell above us, as the mine exploded before our feet. Our hearts
throbbed as if they would break to pieces when we sought over in vain against
the deadly rattle of the machine gun.

With our gas masks on we felt ourselves suffocating to death
in the midst of the gas clouds. We stumbled along in the waterlogged trenches.
We lay out in shell craters through the freezing nights. For days and weeks
together the horror of battle passed over us. We were frozen and hungry and
often on the verge of madness. The cries of the heavily wounded men were on our
ears. We met blinded men staggering back and we heard the death rattle in the
throats of the dying.

Among the heaped up corpses of our dead comrades we lost all
hope of life. We saw the misery of the refugees behind the lines. We saw the
widows and the orphans, the cripples and the suffering, the sick children and
the hungry women at home.

"WHY ALL THIS?"

Let us be honest. Did not each one of us then and there often
ask: Why all this? Can humanity be spared all this in the future?

But we held out, on all sides, as men of duty and discipline
and loyalty, as men who despised cowardice.

Today I take up new the question we then asked and I send it
out to ring as a summons through the world. As one who fought in the front line
trenches to other front line soldiers throughout the world, as a leader of the
German nation to the leaders of other nations, I ask: Must it be? With goodwill
and co-operation cannot we save humanity from this?

Today I can speak, because a man of my own people has
re-established the honour of that people before the world.

Today I can speak because the Leader of my people has himself
offered the hand of peace to the world. Today I can speak because the courageous
stand of one man, Adolf Hitler, is a guarantee against my being misunderstood or
accused of making common cause with the pacifist poltroons.

Today I raise my voice, because I wish also to warn the world
against mistaking the Germany of today, the Germany of peace, for the Germany of
the pacifists.

For this must be proclaimed and made known: Although the men
of the old front line have the thousand fold horrors of the war still before
their minds, and although the post-war generation wants war as little as the
older generation does, yet:

The road is not open for an 'excursion' into our country.

WARMONGERS DON'T FIGHT WARS

Just as in the Great War the French people defended every
rood of their soil with all their might and would defend it again any day
against a renewed attack, so would the German people do in like manner today.
The French front line soldier will specially understand us when we tell those
who are constantly playing with the idea of another war - which of course, would
have to be waged on the front by other than the professional hate mongers - the
French front line soldier will understand us when we tell these people:-

If you dare to attack us, if you dare to march into the new
Germany, then shall the world learn what the spirit of the new Germany is. It
would fight for the inviolability of its freedom as scarcely any other people in
history ever fought.

The French people know how one defends one's native soil.
Every scrap of wood, every hill, every farmstead would have to be conquered with
the outpouring of blood. Old and young would dig themselves into their native
soil. They would defend themselves with a fanaticism unparalleled in the world's
history.

And even though the superiority of armament should turn out
victorious, the way through the Reich would be a road of gruesome sacrifice also
for the invader; because there never was a nation so filled with the sense of
its right, as our nation is, and the sense of its duty to defend itself to the
last against every attack.

The soldiers of France recognise how tenaciously the German
soldiers fought for four-and-a-half years against superior forces.

The soldiers of the old front line want peace

The people want peace

The German Government wants peace.

History will certainly bestow more laurels on the men who in
these difficult times, will have worked to bring an understanding among the
nations, and thus to save civilisation, than on those who think that by
aggressive and military measures they can win victories that will really be
victories. The people themselves will be grateful to those leaders, who will
have assured peace to them, because unemployment, with all its social misery, is
ultimately attributable to a meagre interchange of goods between various
nations. And this interchange is kept at a low level by the absence of mutual
trust.

THE BENEFITS OF PEACE

OUTWEIGH THE BENEFITS OF WAR

It is an indubitable fact that an understanding between
Germany and France would not only help those nations, looked upon as a whole,
but also each single individual among the populations of both. To put the matter
concretely, every Frenchman and every German would thereby be assured of a
higher income permanently or a higher permanent wage.

The war, and the continuation of it by other means under the
name of Peace, brought no good to civilisation or the wellbeing of nations. As
little as the war profited us all, so much more will a real peace benefit us
all.

Real peace and honest mutual trust between the nations will
make possible the reduction off armaments, which today are a heavy drain on a
large section of the income of the nations, therewith detracting from the wealth
of the individual citizens.

Again and again Adolf Hitler has asserted that Germany
demands equality of rights in all spheres, including that of armament. One such
understanding as I have been speaking of shall have been arrived at between
Germany and her neighbours. Germany can easily be content with the minimum
amount of armament, which is necessary for her own internal security, and the
guaranteeing of peace.

The front line soldiers who are now in the German Government
honourably demand peace and understanding. I appeal to the ex-servicemen of all
nations, and even to their governments, to give us their combined support in
striving towards this goal.

From the sacred soil of East Prussia I send out this appeal
to the soldiers of the world who fought in the war. Here on this German
borderland began the great world struggle which brought with it such terrible
sacrifices, sacrifices from which the nations that took part in the struggle
have not yet recovered. I hope that the spirits, which hover over this historic
battlefield from which I send out this cry of peace, will help to make it
effective.

IN THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD

In the memory of its dead, many of whom fell here in East
Prussia, Germany's will to peace will continue to grow stronger sand stronger.

Would that the nations which stand on the other frontiers of
Germany might guarantee a greater degree of security for their own people and
ours through friendly pacts of mutual understanding rather than by the heaping
up of war material. That is our hope." - Rudolf Hess. Konigsberg.

THE FUHRER ARGUES FOR PEACE

"If the Germany of today takes her stand on the side of peace
she does so not because of weakness or cowardice. She takes her stand on the
side of peace because of the National Socialist conception of People and State.
In each and every war for the subjugation of an alien people, National Socialism
recognises a process that sooner or later will alter the inner nature of the
victor - will weaken him and therewith render him vanquished in turn. Setting
aside a mere transitory weakening of the enemy, the European states have nothing
whatsoever to gain from war of any kind, except a trifling alteration of
frontiers which could be entirely out of proportion to the sacrifices entailed.

The blood that was shed on European battlefields during the
past 300 years bears no proportion to the national result of the events. In the
end France has remained France, Germany Germany, Poland Poland and Italy Italy."

Adolf Hitler, 'The Thirteen Points', Reichstag
Speech

FOOTNOTE:

On 3rd
September 1939, England and France declared war on the German nation. The pledge
of Rudolf Hess that they, the German people, would defend themselves with a
fanaticism unparalleled in the world's history, was brought to tragic fruition.
Likewise his prediction that in the end there would be no winners. Ironically it
was the British for whom fate in the fullness of time bestowed economic defeat,
the loss of territory and influence, and its honour among nations.

Today many of its ex-servicemen, their dependants and their
children, go cap in hand to benefit from the prosperity and the generosity of
the German nation. Few with the benefit of hindsight can dispute that the
sentiments expressed by these German tragedians were proven to be correct.